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Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

economist.com

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Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#281

Post by phkahler »

ethanbond wrote: post #72
phkahler wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of things driving up housing costs. Some of those are also driving wage disparity.

What are the “a lot of things?” Sure, construction standards are a bit higher but the technology is also much better and faster to build with. Speculation and landowner greed are the primary drivers of rising housing costs (with restrictive zoning being an consequence of the first two).

>> Speculation and landowner greed are the primary drivers of rising housing costs

No, lower interest rates are the primary driver.

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#282

Post by flavius29663 »

preseinger wrote: post #271
flavius29663 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think for most people it isn't, but only if you tell them the truth. If you gaslight them and say they are 100% safe, then you will get a much higher percentage of people losing trust and not taking the vaccine anymore.

look, like, vaccines are basically one of the greatest accomplishments of humankind, this assertion is pretty obvious from any reasonable review of the relevant science and/or facts of the stuff, and so it's difficult to take seriously anyone who comes to a different conclusion like, if someone would believe you if you told them a vaccine is 99.9% safe, but would refuse to take that vaccine if you told them it was 10…

Exactly. And it's higher than 4 nines, it's 5-6 nines.

I feel like only fringes of society would refuse the vaccine at that point. But what we do is lie and say it's 100%, losing all trust and making more antivaxxers in the process. The original ones that didn't want it at 5 nines wouldn't get it anyway, you're not winning them over by lying.

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#283

Post by Symbiote »

fragmede wrote: post #274
Symbiote wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If breaking the regulations leads to prison for those responsible, it's working as best as it can. (Legal cases, inquests etc continue.)

Prison time won't bring back any of the 72 people that died.

It never does, but what more could have been done?

The regulations existed and were illegally broken.

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#284

Post by fragmede »

preseinger wrote: post #271
flavius29663 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think for most people it isn't, but only if you tell them the truth. If you gaslight them and say they are 100% safe, then you will get a much higher percentage of people losing trust and not taking the vaccine anymore.

look, like, vaccines are basically one of the greatest accomplishments of humankind, this assertion is pretty obvious from any reasonable review of the relevant science and/or facts of the stuff, and so it's difficult to take seriously anyone who comes to a different conclusion like, if someone would believe you if you told them a vaccine is 99.9% safe, but would refuse to take that vaccine if you told them it was 10…

It's basic psychology though. If I told you that my software was 100% magically secure against any and all attacks, vs this other vendor, who has an itemized list of things their product does, who are you going to think is blowing smoke up your ass?

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#285

Post by fragmede »

conanbatt wrote: post #270
Waterluvian wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I've seen a case where the local government wants to build more housing but, gosh, they're just too expensive. It's usually NIMBYism or just general disinterest in a "non-sexy" political issue.

Government does not build housing at all.

Maybe where you are, but in other parts of the world (eg Singapore), the government does!

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#286

Post by fragmede »

ethanbond wrote: post #72
phkahler wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of things driving up housing costs. Some of those are also driving wage disparity.

What are the “a lot of things?” Sure, construction standards are a bit higher but the technology is also much better and faster to build with. Speculation and landowner greed are the primary drivers of rising housing costs (with restrictive zoning being an consequence of the first two).

The technology where I am is largely still 2x4 pieces of wood for framing, with other tree-based materials for most of the rest of it, for one-story buildings. I've heard other places actually use more advanced technology for their materials but I don't see that changing how we build buildings where I am.

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#287

Post by dsfyu404ed »

mrguyorama wrote: post #262
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's so frustrating. You know what's frustrating? Seeing someone who's clearly got enough exposure to building code and similar types of workplace requirements to know they're being misleading do it anyway because they know it's what the audience wants to hear. A huge fraction of code is not written in blood. A huge fraction of those exception requests are legitimate from a "performance of the thing in question" sys…

My very blue collar brother in law became a code enforcement employee for his rich as fuck town for a while. The ONLY people who bitch about building codes are the ones who are CLEARLY out of compliance with code, have been for decades, and have been getting a pass due to nepotism previously, and then they have the time and spite to go to town office meetings and publicly bitch about their previous privileged status…

A rich town where everyone just afford compliance with everything all the time isn't very illustrative. I bet nobody there drives cars on bald tires or pays their babysitter off the books either.

In places where money doesn't grow on trees harder decisions have to be made. Situations like "do I hire a real electrician to install my heat pump and get forced to bring my panel up to current code at great expense or do I hire someone to just install the heat pump on a cash basis or do I replace my existing system like for like" become more common.

I agree code is stupid simple if you're building cookie cutter stuff. It can get very, very, annoying when you're dealing with systems that have N generations of changes and/or are trying to be minimally invasive. Would you rather take a hole saw to the main beam of someone's house or have a sink drain that's a hair too flat for a portion of it's run?

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#288

Post by ethanbond »

phkahler wrote: post #281
ethanbond wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the “a lot of things?” Sure, construction standards are a bit higher but the technology is also much better and faster to build with. Speculation and landowner greed are the primary drivers of rising housing costs (with restrictive zoning being an consequence of the first two).

>> Speculation and landowner greed are the primary drivers of rising housing costs No, lower interest rates are the primary driver.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS

Doesn’t seem like the 20% fed funds rate in 1980 did much.

Obviously low rates didn’t cushion the city -> suburb housing crunch during COVID, but COVID isn’t the only time housing prices have gone up. They seem only to go up.

Land prices track exactly to the productivity of the region. Productivity, as a general rule, goes up due to technology, more people yielding more specialization, more natural resources being discovered etc.

Wherever a tech company puts a new office sees skyrocketing local economic productivity and accordingly sees skyrocketing rent prices. That’s not because Mother Earth is charging more per square foot of space, it’s because landowners are.

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#289

Post by ethanbond »

fragmede wrote: post #286
ethanbond wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the “a lot of things?” Sure, construction standards are a bit higher but the technology is also much better and faster to build with. Speculation and landowner greed are the primary drivers of rising housing costs (with restrictive zoning being an consequence of the first two).

The technology where I am is largely still 2x4 pieces of wood for framing, with other tree-based materials for most of the rest of it, for one-story buildings. I've heard other places actually use more advanced technology for their materials but I don't see that changing how we build buildings where I am.

Do they use nail guns?

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#290

Post by pas »

m0llusk wrote: post #246
jseliger wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simultaneously: https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/02/07/one-stairway-is-enoug... There are building codes that are designed to increase authentic safety, and those that are actually trying to achieve other ends, like decreasing the supply of available housing, via the claim of "safety." "Safetyism" is everywhere: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/safetyism-is-the-water-...

In America lots of people have died in single stairway buildings. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire created a political dynamic where buildings are expected to have dedicated fire escape stairs and that remains a strong social contract to this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...

maybe since then there is a better local optimum in this problem-solution space, hm?

fire safety engineering is a very respectable field, mandating a particular implementation instead of a required safety level is the opposite to good long-term policy.

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